Dota 2 streamers won’t be showing TI11 qualifiers, here’s why

Looking forward to watching The International 2022 qualifiers with your favorite streamer? Well, don’t get too excited because not many prominent streamers will be broadcasting the TI11 qualifiers.

The most important qualifiers of the Dota 2 season have started with South America and Eastern Europe as the first regions to brawl. While the official stream is present as expected, big Dota 2 streamers have barely touched the event. This is a stark contrast to the usual system and it’s the result of a very important decision from Valve. Here’s why your favorite Twitch streamer isn’t watching the qualifiers.

For previous The International qualifiers, streamers big and small have been free to broadcast the matches while providing their own commentary. Those qualifiers were run by Valve, which goes by its normal broadcast policy. However, this year’s preliminaries were instead outsourced to TI showrunner PGL. Now the third-party’s broadcast policy is in effect for the event, and that’s bad news for streamers who planned to show it as content.

Why doesn’t PGL let community streamers watch the TI11 qualifiers?

Community Dota 2 streamers are unable to broadcast The International 2022 qualifiers because the display of sponsors is prohibited by PGL.

Streamer and former pro Wehsing “SingSing” Yuen revealed the official reason on stream. Like many big streamers, SingSing shows sponsored ads on his channel as a form of income. PGL’s rules state that individual streamers can only show the games if they remove all mentions of their personal sponsors. As a result, streamers who do show the games would make considerably less money during those streams.

As for why PGL doesn’t want sponsored community streams, it’s because individual streamer partnerships could conflict with PGL’s own sponsors. Recent PGL events were sponsored by gaming chair manufacturer Secretlab, and the company wouldn’t have wanted streamers running DXRacer ads over the same event. This ruling may make the Dota 2 community upset, but it makes PGL’s sponsors very happy. Either way, Dota 2 fans will find out the competitors at The International 2022 very soon.